Cyrus and Ryanne
by JustForTheGloryOfIt
Summary: Revolution spin off that starts 24 days after the lights go out, and follows two 14 year old girls trying to find their brothers, survive the Pennsylvanian wilderness, and make their way through the quickly devolving carcass that was society.
1. Cyrus

**A/N**

**Disclaimer: We own nothing. Everything but the characters in this story belong to the wonderful people at NBC. To see character sketches 'n such, visit JustForTheGloryOfIt's deviantart account.**

July 28, 2014

I figure that I should do in some way to keep track of the days, so this is it... Great, right? So to recap, it has been 24 days since the power went out (12:00 AM on the 4th of July, to be exact) and from what we know, we don't think that there is power anywhere. So, because RyRy's parents are in the army and my dad doesn't really talk about his job much, (but I know he works for the government and with her parents) we tend to move around a lot, because, you know, we're both army brats (I guess I am, I don't know), and my mom isn't here anymore. We live together, in fact, everywhere we move, we go together. Ryanne's family would take care of me and my older brother, Kyle, when they were here. But normally it was just Ryanne, me, Kyle (who basically controls everything since he's the oldest) and Ry's brother, Oliver, who is in college (not space college, smart people college), so this is one can of ice tea short from a party.

I kinda find this black out weird because its not just the TV or lights, but most things that rely on power to work, my phone wont turn on, my neighbor's solar panels aren't working, even my generator isn't working. I don't know why, but I think it's gonna be a while until we get the power back (if we ever do). But now my brother is going to go to New York to look for more family, (it's not far, seeing as we live in northern New Jersey) so Ryanne is gonna help me guard the food and blankets in our house until he gets back or her brother finds us... I just realized that if the power doesn't get back to normal I'll never be able to see Doctor Who, Supernatural, or Sherlock... actually season 3 of Sherlock is coming out in like 2050, so I don't think I'm gonna miss that much…

I kinda like this notebook thing that is not a diary in anyway whatsoever... Diaries are for the weak and illiterate as Ryanne would say... I'll continue it when I find a real notebook, and its getting late so I might as well go to bed before you know who gets annoyed from the candle light, like god, it's just light, it won't kill you.

Official Signature

Cyrus


	2. Ryanne

**A/N**

**So the perspective changes here. The story isn't in the journal of Cyrus this time, but the head of Ryanne. Perspective is gonna change like this, so the odd chapters will be Cyrus, and the even chapters will be Ryanne (for the most part anyway).**

I peered out the window. The once well-lit street was nearly invisible. Dead. Almost barren. "Whelp, it looks like there isn't much left to do tonight" I said, turning to Cyrus, who looked up from the scrap of paper she was writing on. I looked over at it. "July 28. Is that the date?" I asked. It seemed both too close and too far from the 4th of July.

"Yeah, I think so anyway..."

July 28. It was weird to put a label on the blur of hours that became days of nothing special. "Are you done?" I asked, motioning to the candle next to Cyrus.

"Yeah."

The room was dark again.

* * *

"RyRy. Ryanne. Freaking wake up!" Cyrus was shaking me. RyRy. That is literally the worst nickname ever.

I opened my eyes as slowly as I could. Perhaps preserve whatever sleep remained inside me after such a cruel awakening. There was a light coming from the street outside, and it was coming closer. I got up and followed Cyrus to the window. Some of the neighbors down the street had run out of rations very quickly, and had been struggling ever since. They had somehow acquired a torch, and were approaching our house angry mob style. With them they had rocks that I guessed were for breaking the front windows. It was amazing how quickly everything had gone to shit once the lights went out. The government crumbled, the police just... stopped policing, and people ran out of food. My parents were doomsday preppers, so we had more than enough rations. We shared what we could, we really did, but we kept most for ourselves. Now it was biting us in the ass. I looked over to Cyrus, who was already putting on her boots.

"45 seconds. Grab whatever you can." I whispered, as I ran into our closet to find the expandable escape ladder for fires and the like.

I was right about the rocks. The crash of glass seemed to echo off the houses, and remain in the air forever. I shoved my feet into my hiking boots, not bothering to lace them, and ran to the window. Shoving the bottom pane up I dropped the ladder, letting it extend on its way down. They were on their way up the stairs now, ready to kill us, I suppose. Its easy to raid someone's house if that someone is dead. I let Cyrus go before me, grabbing one of the two backpacks stuffed with clothes and such from her. I didn't even touch any of the rungs of the ladder on my way down, I just slid my hands on the metal bars. Cyrus was waiting for me at the bottom. We ran.

We were maybe half of the way down the street when I realized how quiet it was. We had made quite a ruckus with the shattering of windows and the escaping, and yet not a candle was lit in any of the houses. They must have been awake. I felt like an idiot. They knew. They must have known, and they weren't stopping it.

Bastards.

* * *

We ran all the way to the bunker where my parents had stored the rations. It could hardly be called a bunker. It was more of a walk-in pantry that was underground. And made of steel. And contained weapons. And hiking packs. It wasn't really a pantry at all, come to think of it... Regardless, it was small, not even big enough to sleep in, but it was filled with everything we would need, if everything went according to the glimmer of a plan in my panic-stricken mind.

**A/N**

**Thanks so much for the likes, follows, internet love 'n such everybody! It really makes us feel good about ourselves and that's always fun. And hey, while you're here at the bottom of the page, review the story, will ya? It'll help us figure out what you want from this story, and, hey maybe its the same as what we want. That would be convenient...**


	3. Cyrus 2

**A/N**

**Thanks for the follows and review (thats singular for a reason, people come on).**

Date: Either late the night of the 28th or early the morning of the 27th, it's not daylight yet so i don't know for sure.

Well dammit. I guess the ladder gave me a cut and worst of all it ripped my pants. They were my favorite pants, seriously, favorite. pants. and to top it all off the neighbors broke into our house and TRIED TO FREAKING KILL US, and we didn't even have a full minute before we had to escape through the window. I tried to grab as much stuff as I could, but I couldn't get much. Now we are stuck with the shoes we put on, the clothes we were wearing, only a few shirts and pants I could find in the drawers and on the floor and whatever was already in the bags, if anything. Man, this really sucks. I get how they ran out of food so fast but what makes them think its ok to go into someone's house and try to kill someone while they sleep.. Wow.

But now me and RyRy are just hanging in the bunker gathering necessary things like food and such (by that I mean RyRy is doing that while I write). Now she is looking through her bag to see what she I got her. I don't even care what I grabbed for myself because worst case scenario we get to go clothes hunting and I mean _anything is better than going somewhere without any problem_. I wonder if we're gonna need toilet paper…

I asked Ryanne and she gave me a face so I'll take it as a yes.

The bunker is nice, maybe a little small, but it would be fun to live in here and like every good love story it must eventually come to a sad end. So when we are done going through things that might help us out we will leave and never return. Well at least I'll always have this notebook to remind me of this place. I'm gonna leave a note for my brother if he comes back saying where we are going and what happened. Ryanne insists that we leave now before the sun comes up and that we head to the school, you know, to see if anyone took anything that could've been useful like, oh I don't know, some of those bows and arrows from gym, and if no one did, well, weapon. Yeah its becoming day soon I think that were gonna camp out in one of the abandoned houses by the school but wait till night to actually go in for dramatic effect, no, just kidding, just in case someone is looking for us we would already be hidden.

Signature

Cyrus

* * *

Date: July 29th

OHH MY GOD I have nothing to do today and I need to wait all day to go to the school but that will take forever and me and Ryanne are taking shifts for who can sleep and who keeps watch and guess who gets to sleep first. She said not to go anywhere but I mean where am I supposed to go? She told me like 1000 times to stay put and keep quiet. Its like she doesnt trust me. Uggggh…I AM SO BORED! I miss music, I had to leave my guitars/uke/piano at the house and this place doesn't have any instruments. *sigh*

Cyrus

**A/N**

**Seriously guys please review, we like being told that we're doing a good job, and if we're not, then tell us that too. We wont cry i promise. By the way, this is gonna be coming out every other week or so, as of now. It may not be consistent but we're going back to school this week so it's gonna be a bit busy for us here at JustForTheGloryOfIt.**


	4. Ryanne 2

**A/N**

**That's what I'm talking about! We got a bunch of awesome reviews from a bunch of awesome people, and that makes me very happy. Keep up the good work! Now, in regards to the story, this is a really important chapter for the girls, but this is just the start. We have stuff planned out for the next like 20 chapters but we want to know what you think is gonna happen! We love audience participation, and I'm excited to see what y'all say.**

The school was a special kind of eerie at night. Maybe it was the emptiness, or perhaps the mess of graffiti that covered the exterior. We had jumped the chain link fence to the courtyard, and had used one of the benches as a battering ram on the windows of the doors leading to the science wing. Cyrus had wanted to bring a torch, but I was afraid of us being seen. Near death experiences will do that to ya. I knew right as we climbed through the window that she had been right, though. I couldn't see a damn thing beyond the twilight coming in from the widows.

"Told you so." whispered Cyrus.

"We're just gonna have to open all the classroom doors on our way, then." I sighed. It was gonna be a drag to do, but we didn't have much of a choice. We had to see where we were going.

* * *

Cyrus glared at me. "Dude I'm sorry I didn't listen to you but we would have been seen." I said, trying to salvage her good graces.

"Lets just get this done and get out of here, this is creepy."

Again she was right, I didn't know how long we had been in there, but it had taken us at least 15 minutes to get from one side of the school to the other, something that should have taken maybe five. At most.

I looked around, squinting. It had only grown darker since we had broken into the school, and the lack of windows that gave all the students vampiric tendencies wasn't helping. The far right corner of the gym was where the supply closet was, and to my relief it was unlocked. Cyrus seemed disappointed, I think she liked the smashing. I thought back to my time as a gym teacher's pet. Mrs. Tophangar would always let me put the stuff away from the period before mine so I didn't have to run laps at the beginning of class. Right after spring break, the juniors started archery, the bows were here somewhere... I stepped to my left and shoved a bin of hockey sticks out of the way, and grabbed the pvc rack of bows. Dragging it out into the gym, I told Cyrus to get the bucket and crate from the right of the hole in the mess of athletic equipment where the bows had been. There wasn't much of a selection, really, it's not like our school had spent time and effort in choosing the bows, there were just a few plastic compounds, and one recurve for the weaklings who couldn't handle pulling back 30 lbs of tension. I always felt bad for them, when it was their turn to shoot they would try a compound for a few minutes and not shoot a single arrow. Tophangar would see them, make everyone stop, and send the poor kid across the shooting range and to the closet to grab the recurve. It was tragic, really, but what can you do?

I grabbed a red bow and Cyrus grabbed a blue. I walked over to the bucket, pulled out two quivers, one red, one blue, and started sorting the arrows by state of disrepair. Cyrus was digging through the crate of arm guards. "You think we'll need these? Maybe we can duct tape them together and make breast-plate thingys..." she wondered.

"Well that's not gonna work" I responded "Just for stability reasons, also can you imagine that? It would look ridiculous, but I could use the shorter ones as gauntlets... You should get a long one as well, just so you have it."

I put all the good arrows I could fit into the blue quiver, and the rest in the red, along with those slightly inferior quality. I checked to see if they were too full. I soon came to the conclusion that the quivers were full enough to not rustle or empty at a slight angle, but loose enough to allow itself to be emptied quickly and with ease. In other words, they were perfect. Cyrus handed me two short camo arm guards, and I handed her the blue quiver.

"Lets see..." I mumbled, trying to find a place to hang the bow on my pack.

"You wouldn't be having trouble if you didn't make us carry these giant things" Cyrus complained, motioning to my pack, as well as her's.

"Cyrus I don't think you understand our situation. We will need these."

"Liar"

"Ok let's make a bet then, one year from today, if you haven't gotten any use out of carrying a pack, I owe you 50 bucks, if you have, you owe me 50 bucks. Deal?"

"Deal."

I strapped my bow next to my sleeping bag on the bottom of my pack.

"Lets get the hell outta here."

* * *

Judging by the moon, we had several hours of night left. My eyes had adjusted well enough for me to be able to see about five feet ahead of me, and I was grateful for it. We were almost to the strip mall near our house, and I didn't want to miss any turns, nor was I eager to let people know we were here by lighting a torch.

We took the last right. "Just a few minutes now... Just a few minutes now..." I repeated to myself. Hot damn I was tired. I had slept from about five to around noon, then Cyrus slept and I made sure no one came a'knocking at the abandoned house we had squatted in. It was strange. I didn't know the family all that well, but I had English and Science with one of the kids that used to live there. Connor I think his name was. From what I heard he and his family split about two weeks after the lights went out. I never knew where they went, but it was obvious that they weren't planning on coming back. They had taken most of their clothes, and all of their canned food was gone. I guessed that the disorder of their house was in was due to looters. I know this not because I was looting, I was just going through everything to see if any of it would be useful to us. That's not looting I promise.

We made it. Cyrus walked ahead, counting the storefronts until she reached EMS. "Well I don't know what I expected..." she remarked. The front window was smashed open, and everything inside was askew. Of course people would go there first, EMS has knives. Raiders love knives. They make them feel powerful.

"I really need to get better at making plans. I always miss something important." I sighed "Lets see what we can salvage anyway, I guess" We stepped over the shards of glass that were the front window. I got the right side of the store, she got the left, and we got to work.

Maybe an hour later we laid everything out in the staff room. I lit a candle. Cyrus unrolled her sleeping bag, and took a corner. Meanwhile, I sorted it all and put together a list.

Ryanne

(red) **compound bow** (sorta crappy, but hey, it was free and we didn't have to fight anyone for it, a major plus)

a (red) **quiver** of the least-horrible arrows we could find at the school (not as good as Cyrus's, but she'll use it more) (we should probably sharpen them too... when we get the chance)

**full tang sheathed knife** (straight edge, damascus steel, petrified wood handle, filing, really snazzy, it was a birthday present)

**hunting knife** (clip point, folding, black plastic handle, and a skinning hook)

**machete** (a big ol' khukuri, good for hacking at things, and mighty intimidating)

**multitool** (leatherman sidekick)

**fishing line**

**full tang bushcraft knife **(4.5 in. blade made of stainless steel black micarta handle)

**flint and steel** (you know, I should find a chain and put it on a necklace, that'd be convenient)

**fire starters** (homemade, lint and wax, all in an egg carton)

**mess kit**

**bear canister**

**water pump and purification tablets**

**canteen**

**other canteen**

**bandanas**

**paracord** (type 550, 50 ft. or so)

**duct tape **(that stuff fixes everything)

**heat reflective blanket**

**sleeping bag**

**emergency whistle**

**balaclava**

**wicking shirt **(short-sleeved)

**change of pants**

**base layer**

**wicking shirt** (long-sleeved)

**wicking long underwear**

**hat**

**gloves**

**compressed jacket**

Cyrus

(blue) **compound bow** (same type as mine)

a (blue) **quiver **of the least-horrible arrows we could find at the school

**hatchet** (nothing big, just enough to chop branches and firewood)

**partly serrated pocket knife** (approx. 2.5 in., steel handle, used to be Cyrus's dad's)

**snare wire**

**drawstring day pack**

**little sewing kit** (literally just a needle, thread, and tiny scissors)

**first aid kit** (gauze, neosporin, band-aids, the whole deal)

**mess kit**

**matches**

**candles**

**canteen**

**other canteen**

**emergency rations **(the gross dehydrated protein bar things and some beef jerky, it's not much, but hey, if we need 'em we need 'em)

**apples **(the green kind, granny smith I think it is, they're the best kind, also they last hella long, and hey, they've got vitamins or something)

**emergency whistle**

**mirror**

**sleeping bag**

**biodegradable soap**

**bug spray** (the deep woods type, hopefully it'll work)

**sunscreen**

**ziplock bags **(quart)

**notebook** (for obvious reasons)

**pencil **(most of one, anyway)

**wicking shirt** (tank top)

**change of pants**

**base layer**

**wicking shirt **(long-sleeved)

**wicking long underwear**

**hat**

**gloves**

**compressed jacket**

* * *

I don't know how I fit it all, but after a few tries, I did. I checked outside. It was probably two hours until sunrise. I woke up Cyrus.

"Cyrus. Dude we should clear out, I wanna be gone by daybreak."

She rolled over. "Lets just stay here today..." Then, sitting up "I mean, it's not like anyone is gonna come around... all the good stuff is gone."

"Cyrus don't you get it? We can't stay near here. You saw what they tried to do to us the other night, they might not still be looking for us, but we can't take that chance. We have to assume that they would kill us if they could, if we don't, we might get hurt." I insisted.

"Ok fine, where do you say we go?" She asked, quickly waking up.

"I know most of the way to Penn State... We take 208 to 80, and beyond that we can pick up a map at a rest stop, but that's our only shot now, and we have to take it."

"Cant we just go find Kyle? He's closer..."

"I thought about that, but I'm not too eager to go blindly into the city." I admitted

"Yeah, I agree."

We packed everything up, and made it to the highway by sunrise. "Lets put in half a day and quit, I'm running on empty right now." I groaned.

The sun was high when we stopped. I ate an apple and took a power nap while Cyrus looked over the list and practiced snares.

**A/N**

**Ok so one last thing. By now you have probably tried to go onto deviantart and find the character drawings. The truth is that we are still trying to convert the drawings into actual documents that we can upload without shadows and other such lighting issues. I know that its still early in the story but if you want to, send us a drawing or a description of what you think Cyrus, Ryanne, Oliver, Kyle, anyone looks like! Email it to us at** **justforthegloryofit**at**gmail**dot**com**** (I'm not allowed to give you links, but the unbolded words should be symbols when you type it, you can figure it out), and if you do, you will get a secret perk. The most accurate descriptions win fabulous prizes. Submissions will be allowed until we say otherwise, aka a few chapters from now.  
**


	5. Cyrus 3

**A/N**

**I hope yall are ready for this chapter. This is the first time the girls encounter violence face to face, and it turned out loaded with awesomeness and good stuff. I hope I'm not overselling it. Go on! Read, review, follow and whatnot.**

Date: I'll fill it out later.

Early in the morning. I slept for a few hours but I'm still crazy tired. Finally Ryanne and I are able to start heading out. But damn. It's sad how fast this happened, one day everything is fine and ok and the next these people who known me for a long time try to murder me. I am just in shock, and wow. No one ever thinks about how technology and electricity are (or should I say were) a big part of society. Not having that can change someone so much that they are lead to murder their friends and family... I don't even get how that happens. I feel like now since it's been a few days since the incident it's finally sinking in. The reality of this is just so confusing and sad, but this is life now and I'm not sure if it will ever get better... But one can dream, I guess...

Later

We walked for maybe an hour and then we stopped. Ry Ry took a nap and tried out some traps 'n such. It's around twilight now and we just finished setting up camp for tonight, and by setting up camp I mean Ryanne put a blanket down and I hid some of my stuff up in a tree. I also found a tree I'm gonna sleep in because I don't like sleeping on the ground. I just don't so shut up... Anyway... I think we'll just chill here till tomorrow then we need to leave the area. I don't even know where we are right now but Ry Ry says she knows where we're going so I'll trust her on that. Goodnight notebook.

Cy

Date: dammit I'm losing track... The day after yesterday's day before?

Well shit. We have this little problem and it's really bad. I'll try to write it in the best detail that I can just in case someone finds this after I'm killed and so they can see how awesome Ry and I are. I was just waking up this morning and I guess it was a little bit later considering how Ryanne was finishing up her "breakfast"(if you're gonna call a piece of bread breakfast then breakfast), I threw a small stick at her to make sure she wasn't a zombie. I was going to get out of the tree, but then Ryanne told me to climb back up. I was confused but I didn't hesitate to do it considering the unusual tone in her voice. When I got back up to the spot where I put all of our important things, she told me to go a little bit higher, above a mess of branches and dead leaves. I felt like I would fall at any second it was so high. If I fell it could have been bad, I could have landed on my head or worse broke my leg, but luckily I found a sturdy branch to stand on. Then, from under me I could barely hear Ry say something along the lines of "do you see anything at 10:00?". I checked and all I could see were trees and bushes. I kept looking and then human nature kicked in, and my eyes caught sight of movement and it was coming toward our camp site and fast. I got to a lower branch but I was still hidden by many dead leaves and told Ry. She wasn't shocked by the fact someone was coming. We agreed that it wasn't someone who was following us but either way wasn't good news. From what I could tell it was a man in his late twenties, and from the tree he didn't look armed but I could have been wrong. Also by his appearance he looked like he'd been eating pretty good, so he was probably in a group. My best guess was that he saw smoke from a fire last night and was sent to investigate. Ryanne grabbed a knife from her neatly packed bag then threw the bag and a few other things up to me to place on a few branches close to the trunk. She was clenching her fist tight, I could barely see the knife that was the size of her hand open in it, I couldn't tell if she's scared or prepared to attack.

The guy was getting closer and we didn't talk about a plan in any way, but we already knew what to do. There were a few outcomes that wouldn't be good so we need to be careful. He was coming. He started to yell out to Ryanne saying stuff like "oh hello" or "come here little girl, I want to talk to you" but everything about him screamed sketchy or pedo. So he started to come closer. He wouldn't talk while he was walking, I think he was planning to attack in someway or take a bag that we left at the bottom of the tree. He was right in front of the tree I was in, and he hadn't noticed me yet. He started asking questions like where are you from, are you here alone, are you with a group, and do you have any food to spare. Right then I saw him reaching behind his back and lifting up the back or his shirt ever so lightly to grab something with an oddly familiar shape. At that moment I dropped a leaf to signal to Ryanne that he had a knife and she nodded. Then I jumped. The poor guy didn't see it coming. I landed on him black widow style, with one knee on either shoulder, knocking him unconscious right away. We tied him up to the tree and decided what we would do next. Ryanne was going to try and find the camp while I watched the guy, if she wasn't back in twenty minutes she told me to leave without her, but we both knew that wouldn't happen. She left. I don't know what she did in that time but I watched her until she was out of sight. About five minutes passed before that guy woke up. And was confused and had a headache, but I couldn't blame him, he could blame me but whatever. He started saying a bunch of things but I wasn't listening. 20 minutes passed and I started to listen to him "she's not coming back" "she left you here alone" "why don't you just leave now she is probably dead"... Dead... It's funny in a sense... How someone who just left a few minutes ago be dead now, I just couldn't bare the thought of it... "SHUT UP" I screamed at the top of my lungs. I started hitting him, punching him on the arms and chest and even the face a few times... can I say I for that? I didn't mean to say it, scream it, do it, but I came out. I couldn't let this guy get to me. But he kept on talking. "you won't last a day without her" "you wouldn't have been able to capture me without her" I punched him one last time, and I guess I have a strong uppercut because he was out again. Then out of the corner of my eye I saw a running figure and it was Ryanne, thank god. She yelled to me asking why I didn't leave and I simply said no one will be left behind while we are together. Then we decided to leave the guy there, he'll be found by his big group of eventually. I got the stuff down and we left. Ryanne noted while we were walking how the guy was in really bad shape when we left and asked me if I did anything to him, I tried to avoid answering in as many ways as I could because I don't want her to worry about what I did. she eventually gave up, this wouldn't be the first time this has happened... Now we are camping out in a nice little field. I think that people used to have camp fires here, must of been fun.

-C


	6. Ryanne 3

**A/N**

**Sorry you guys! I know that its been 5ever since we've updated, but we haven't forgotten about you, I promise. It just took a while to circulate this chapter for us writers here at JustForTheGloryOfIt. School, am I right? It takes all day then they give you homework to take more of your time. ANYWAY I'm rambling. Here's the chapter, I hope it was worth the wait, if so, tell us! If it wasnt, tell us that too, we can work through whatevers been bothering you. We're willing to change some things around if need be.**

I woke up to Cyrus's bag falling on my gut. She was in the tree directly above me and she must have forgotten to tie it down when we set up camp. It was for the best, I guess, it was just a bit before daybreak and we hadn't gone very far the day before. Cyrus was still asleep and I let her stay that way, she had stayed up for quite a while last night, I think she was doing a lot of thinking about what had happened with the guy at our camp yesterday, I don't think that she knows all I do about what went down. I wasn't going to bring it up again, though. If she was going to tell me, she would do it on her terms. With all the moving around we did, a good nights sleep was crucial, not like sleeping on the ground was a particularly restful experience, but if you needed it, it would work out fine.

I took a thick stick and carved into the ground something that sort of resembled "BRB -SUNRISE" the "s"s made it hard to read, but it didn't look like "he found me send help" so I let it be. I grabbed my hunting knife and machete and set out to find the snare had set. The sun had just finished rising when I found the darn thing, it was my first snare since the camping trip when I was eight, just after Oliver had read a book on hunting and fishing in excitement for our three day excursion in the woods. I made him show me one, but it never caught anything. My latest attempt was a glorified jumble of wires. That is, a glorifies jumble of wires with a rabbit hanging by the neck about three feet in the air. I couldn't believe my luck, the universe had punched me in the face with this blackout, but if all of my snares turned out like this one, I could almost forgive it.

The poor bunny, though. I wasn't torn up by the fact that I had killed it, that's just the way of the world, but there it was, trying to eat the most bruised of our apples that I had sliced up, when out of no where it was snapped up, killed and slightly mangled. And now it was all gross and sad looking on a branch. Ew. Well, I cut it down, forcing to look it in an evolutionary food chain sort of way, thereby making my day not ruined.

I didn't know where to put it, so I left the wire around its neck and carried that. Not wanting to waste any of the wire that I didn't know if I would be able to get more of, I put aside the rabbit and collected all of the wire, tying it with itself into a bundle thingy around my forearm. I undid my belt, and put the wire on so that when I re-clipped it, it hung next to my thigh.

I hurried back to camp, and Cyrus was just coming down from her nest in the tree. She looked like she could sleep for another five hours, we both could but that wasn't gonna happen. When she was finally awake and part of the real world and saw the dead rabbit, she gave out a little "Aww, poor little guy" but still seemed a little too out of it to care.

There was a stump about ten yards from where our stuff was, and I sat on it, bunny in one hand, hunting knife in the other, and wire at the ready in case things got really gross. Almost everything I knew about skinning I learned Star Trek into Darkness, that one scene at the beginning when the ship flies overhead some barbarians or whatever and they have a squirrel or something hanging from a tree and they just ripped the skin right off. I missed fandoms. I all wanted in the world was some Doctor Who or Buffy or something. Damn you, blackout.

I flipped open the knife and cut down the torso of the rabbit. I've gotta say, there was less blood than I had expected, but there was still blood. Plenty of it. I realized that it was because I had punctured the layer of (I'll say tissue because second skin is considered gross) tissue that keeps all of the innards in place and from leaking through the fur (maybe second skin wasn't the problem). I took a mental note not to that again. Cyrus had been leaning over my shoulder, a for a mix of educational, gross, and badass purposes.

Cyrus circled around the area looking for some dead leaves and branches, when she gathered enough she cleared an area a few yards away from me, threw all the branches and such down into what could be perceived as a shape and used a match on it, starting a small blaze that wouldn't last long without being tended to.

We decided to just put the thing over the fire. We kept the fire small so we could get going when we were done, and we fashioned it hog-roast style nice and close to the fire. We had no spices or anything, so we knew that it would taste bland and sort of bad but I figured it was worth it. Fresh meat. It sounds barbaric but I was really excited to not eat jerky and apples again. The rabbit slowly began to brown, and at one point I thought that it was ready, but a slash to the gut and the respective juices that spilled out told me otherwise. Finally, when the sun was about an hour and 45 minutes into the sky, the bunny was cooked enough to be eaten without risk of catching Ebola or something terrible. At this point I had passed the point of grossed out, and didn't really care about touching Jeffery the rabbit I had killed skinned and cooked (Cyrus named him), so I took my knife and dragged it almost all the way down the rib cage and snapped it, so Cyrus could have one half and I could have the other. The two pieces weren't close to being even, but I didn't care. I tried to give Cyrus the bigger half, but she was so appalled by the whole ordeal that she just couldn't.

Jeffrey tasted different than normal meat. Not better or worse, just different. Maybe it was because he was wild, maybe because I did everything myself, I'm not sure. I doubt I'll ever know.

When I finished I put out the fire and cleaned up all of my junk. My knife was caked the with blood and other grody bodily substances of Jeffrey. I wiped it off with a bandana, and clipped it to my pocket, just to the left of my sheath. I noticed just how many knives I had. I knew that it was a lot, but I literally had a machete, hunting knife, bushcraft knife, full tang utility, and a multi tool. That's a ridiculous amount of knives. I knew that I wouldn't need all of them, too but I kept them just in case. I took a mental note to find a spring and clean it properly when I got the chance. I needed some more water too.

* * *

We put in a full day after that, we must have made it a long way because we didn't stop long for lunch, we just took enough of a rest at a spring Cyrus found to refill our waters, clean my knife, and grab and apple each for the road.

We did our best to stay out for sight when we passed a town, we weren't still trying to hide, but neither of us were eager to get into anymore trouble. As we had found, people usually bring such things, and vise versa.

People suck.

We did, however see some people. I mean, it's not like _everyone_ died. This whole thing was pretty much one big purge, and the ones who made it were the strong, the prepared, and the good at hiding. There were some exceptions to that rule, but by and large it was surprisingly accurate. You could sometimes tell who was who by their houses. The strong usually had a flagpole outside, emptied after the blackout, probably, and a well trafficked front yard, despite being overgrown. The prepared had a big yard near the highway, close to the property there is a door in the ground that goes into their bunker. A normal person would have a hard time finding it, but given my parents' obsession with prepping, I wasn't a normal person. The good at hiding were hard to spot, for obvious reasons. They never lit any candles at night, covered their windows, and they kept their yards clean and free of too much debris. Sometimes, _sometimes_ you could see a light coming from a basement in the middle of the night.

* * *

When we stopped for the night, Cyrus went off to set a trap, and I set a fire just as the sun was going down. I climbed Cyrus's sleeping tree so I could see around our camp. I was looking to take some mental record of what houses had people in them and what houses didn't. I figured it would be useful to do so for looting purposes. Bored, I jabbed a stick into an apple and roasted it. Surprisingly, it wasn't disgusting. Mushy, very mushy, but not disgusting. It reminded me of the crust pockets filled with warm apple sauce that the cafeteria at school passed off for apple pie. Cyrus came back and saw what I was doing, out of curiosity, she asked for a bite. When she took one she showed a bit of a grimace, but didn't say anything else. She didn't roast her apple. I was fucking sick of apples. They weren't filling, and they tasted like, well, apples. I left the fire to Cyrus. I was tired to the point of feeling stupid. Pulling my sleeping bag out of my pack, we both muttered our respective goodnights, and soon after that, I was asleep.

* * *

I woke up earlier than I had expected. I thought I heard something, but maybe I didn't. I really couldn't tell. It was probably a half hour before sunrise, meaning that trying to get extra sleep would be useless. I threw a stick at Cyrus. "Rise and shine, motherfucker." I nearly shouted. I was fucking TIRED, but we had ground to cover and if I didn't make the both of us rally, neither of us would. It was gonna be a hot one, I could feel it, but the sun wasn't up yet, so it wasn't bad. I left to go check the trap Cyrus had set, despite my attempts to make her go. "You set the thing, you have to empty it". She wouldn't though, something about "the grossest thing ever". Anyway, she was charged with the task of cleaning up camp while I checked the trap.

The trap wasn't far away, so I made it there in a few minutes. when I got there, I looked to see how the thing worked, and, honestly, she did a pretty good job. I would have to give her kudos when I next saw her. I looked for the animal. I knew the trap hadn't looked as it did now, so something must have set it off, but I couldn't find what it had meant to catch. I checked with her when I ran back to camp, and she said that she had set it up correctly, she knew that much. Apparently she had thought to take me on a surprise camping trip for my birthday at the beginning of August. I guess this wasn't what she had imagined. Anyway, she had started studying up on camping things.

She said that she knew a thing or two about snares, and that she hadn't messed that one up. So, she lead me to it and she looked it over, and she did confirm that it had been set off, but, and I'm paraphrasing here, the type of trap she built was specifically made to be, once triggered, virtually inescapable. I can't say I totally understood how it all worked, as it was moderately complicated, and I was so overtired that almost everything was going right over my head. So, having total faith in her, I wondered aloud how it was set off if it was empty. She didn't know, and I think that she was a bit perturbed that it hadn't worked out quite as she had planned.

We got back to camp, and it was just the way we had left it. The bags were next to Cyrus's tree, and the apples were, as usual, dwindling in number. I remembered the houses I had noted as empty the night before, and, doing so, we set off to loot what we could. It probably took about three hours to get through all of the houses. We were being thorough, and in being thorough took a while.

This is what we got:

* 7 soup cans (assorted)

* 5 cans of peaches

* 4 sleeves of crackers

* 2 bags of almonds

* 1 box of granola bars

We got back on the road. It took us a while, after we had escaped the labyrinth that was the town we had stumbled into to find the highway again. At any rate, we got our bearings and walked. We started passing more deserted cars, and Cyrus picked up complaints about her monstrous pack where she had left off. All seemed to be well with the world.

I started hearing things again. Nothing major, just a shuffle here, a twig there, but nothing more substantial to convince myself that I wasn't loosing it. It wouldn't have made sense for us to have been followed for that long, I mean, who would be going exactly where we were from exactly where we were? And, if it wasn't a coincidence, it would have had to have been either a pedophile or someone who wanted to mug us. But there are other vulnerable girls around that don't make you walk for miles on end, and we may be ridiculously attractive but come on, that's just ridiculous. And if they had wanted to mug us he could have quickly, when we were sleeping, or at any point on the highway, as there was no one around.

* * *

We took a break around noon, as the location of the sun told me, for lunch near a brook. It was damn hot out, and I felt as if I could just about die, but instead of doing that, I took out my balaclava and soaked it in the water. Cyrus starred at me as I tied it around my head. "Ok there has to be some story about how you found out about those things." she said.

I leaned in. "I read the label." I whispered. technically it was a shemagh, but I used it as a balaclava, so I came to use the two words interchangeably.

I ate my handful of almonds and my granola bar with happiness. It was sure nice to eat something other than an apple or a bunny named Jeffery. I heard something again, and this time I didn't doubt myself. I took a twig from the bush next to me and wrote in the soft dirt "someones here check it out?". It was messy, of course, but she seemed to get the message, and maybe she had heard the same things, and was questioning herself as well. I pointed at one of the trees, and she nodded. We scooted over in the direction of the bush, giving us cover enough to not seem intentional, but for it to still seem as if Cyrus was with me.

Cyrus, to her credit, is a hell of a climber, and she is stealthy as... well... something that's really fuckin stealthy. She reminded me of Rue in the hunger games when Katniss is in the tree with the tracker jackers and all of the careers are at the foot of the tree. She came back, maybe five minutes later with Rebecca by one hand, and Troye by the other and she was dragging them behind her, and she said "Ryanne look what I found!"

I responded with "Aw honey, you really have got to start warning me when you bring your friends over for lunch, I never know how much food to make." It wasn't funny, but if I don't laugh at my jokes, who will? I was a bit envious that she could do something like that so well when I would probably try, but end up making some noise and giving myself away. She was more of an adc, and I was more of a tank (to use league of legends lingo). We both did important stuff, but what I did seemed like more than it was, and what she did seemed unimportant to the casual observer. I felt bad about that, I really did, but that was just the way it worked with us.

Despite that, I made a point to give her as much credit as I could whenever I could, that way she wouldn't feel neglected.

We knew these people. They were the same age as us, and they were from the same place as us. I couldn't tell you why they were in the woods. Hey, who am I to judge?

Rebecca was a bit of a queen bee at our old school, and Troye? Well, he was the Ryan to her Sharpay, only with less willpower, and, up to this point, zero character development. He just followed her around and had no independent thought. I knew that one day he would be liberated in a big dance number or montage, but today was not that day. They were the last people I had expected to see in the woods.

We grilled them with questions. Apparently, both of their families had gone to stay with Rebecca's aunt, as it was less populated and therefore safer where she lived. Their parents (and aunt) disappeared just a few days prior and they didn't know what to do. They didn't know anyone around where they were, and with the food shortage, neighbors weren't all that hospitable to strangers. They had been following us since we made camp last night. I guess I had made a ruckus in the tree when I was house spotting, and the trap was near Rebecca's aunts house. They had taken the squirrel from the trap, but they couldn't bring themselves to skin the thing so they discarded it.

I could have hit them right there. I wanted that damn squirrel.

Because they were alone and incapable of providing for themselves, Cyrus and I decided to let them tag along. In doing so, we forced ourselves to slow down. You can't hurry Rebecca! We made it clear to her that we didn't like having her there. We were accepting of Troye, but we were God awful to Rebecca, and I regret that. I really do.


End file.
